


Teaching You

by HK44



Category: Batman - All Media Types
Genre: Family Feels, Family Fluff, Ficlet, Fluff, Fluff and Humor, brothers being brother, dick teaches damian trapeze stuff and it goes well
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-07
Updated: 2018-02-07
Packaged: 2019-03-14 20:25:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 630
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13597716
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HK44/pseuds/HK44
Summary: “Let go when you start to feel yourself drop!”Damian nodded, grabbing the bar and steadying himself on the ledge. They’d practiced just holding onto it, floating through the air and Damian was decent at that.But really? Who wasn’t? Beside Tim, apparently.





	Teaching You

“Let go when you start to feel yourself drop!”

Damian nodded, grabbing the bar and steadying himself on the ledge. They’d practiced just holding onto it, floating through the air and Damian was decent at that.

But really? Who wasn’t? Beside Tim, apparently.

It was actually pretty sweet of Damian to ask Dick to teach him. He’d tried back when they were Batman and Robin (or Flippy Bats and Murder Robin, as Jason had drunkenly declared on the phone in the middle of the night) but Damian had snarled, all teeth and self-righteous arrogance, that he’d rather be gutted then stoop himself so low as to preform circus tricks.

Dick had been thinking about asking again once Damian was a little calmer, less short-tempered and more open to Dick’s help and ideas, but Bruce came back.

And Damian wasn’t around as much.

Well, that was a lie, wasn’t it? Damian didn’t go anywhere.

Dick did.

He shook off his thoughts.

It didn’t matter.

They were here now. Together. Working in tandem and Damian was flying through the air, eyes focused hard but lips twitching back grins.

His fingers released their grip and he was twisting gracefully just like Dick had taught him when he was attached to the harness earlier, body flexing as he-

“FUCK!”

-faceplanted directly onto the floor.

Dick swore and rushed over. How did he drop so quickly? Was he secretly made of rocks?

Damian had already shoved himself up to knees and was rubbing his jaw once Dick reached him. Instead of grabbing him as instinct insisted, Dick dropped to a squat and looked him over.

“You okay?”

Damian nodding, rubbing his cheek. “I’m fine.” He stood to his feet, glancing back at the trapeze bar hanging above them. “The fall was not that far.”

Dick waited for Damian to shrug away from him, call off the teaching to do something else and then inform Dick he was no longer interested after a few days.

Damian hated not being able to learn things quickly, when he wasn’t instantly the master of a subject, an occupation,  _anything_.

So when he stretched, barely wincing as his shoulder cracked, and asked Dick, “What did I do wrong?”, it took Dick a few seconds.

“Uh-” Dick glanced up to the bar. “I think you probably just threw your weight wrong.” He paused for a quick second. “Do you want me to show you?”

There had been times when Dick offered, or insisted really, on showing Damian how to do something and Damian reacted poorly, always preferring to teach himself, not liking to be bossed around and told what to do.

Over the years, Dick had learned to lessen his insistence, that it’d just end poorly for both of them.

And Damian never liked when Dick practiced in the corner of the cave that Bruce had set up especially for him, back when they lived at the manor. And when they didn’t and couldn’t be bothered to travel as far for the professional-kind of set up, Damian always mocked Dick’s choice of gyms. They always had something for him to tumble and flip onto.

Something that had him flying.

But this time Damian nodded and Dick let out a sigh of relief before climbing up the ladder and pulling the bar back. Tightening his grip on it, he glanced down at Damian who was watching him expectantly.

No childish anger in his face.

Just quiet thought, quiet consideration and calmed focus. The kind that had started creeping up around their last couple of months together. The kind Dick hadn’t seen since.

Dick looked back at the space ahead of him.

Damian had matured, gotten better.

He’d grown up.

And, Dick thought as he pushed off the ledge, maybe he had too.

**Author's Note:**

> Because I thought Damian and Cass would be the only ones to really get a hang of it and my friend Metal argued that only Cass would and Damain would fail instantly and then get upset and the idea of Damian gracefully flying through the air before dropping right onto his face like a scene from a cartoon had me giggling so I wrote this.
> 
> I still think Damian would get a grip on the technique after a few more tries though.
> 
> [Tumblr](http://happyk44.tumblr.com/post/170591185557/let-go-when-you-start-to-feel-yourself-drop)||[Insta](http://instagram.com/hk44_art)


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